Not many people can say they sold a product to Barry Diller that changed how an entire generation meets.
Amar Varma can.
He’s a five-time founder and five-time exit. He’s been a GP with his own fund and an LP in other people’s funds. That last role is where the problem found him.
He showed up at an industry event and a fund manager walked over, shook his hand, told him how glad they were to have him as an investor. Varma had no idea who they were, no idea what fund he was in.
Not because he’s careless. Because the infrastructure underneath private markets investing is genuinely broken.
Fifteen portals. Fifteen 2FA codes. Quarterly PDFs that still don’t reconcile. Every cap table he ever made or received had errors.
The software wasn’t the problem. The workflow was wrong.
That experience - multiplied across family offices, endowments, pensions and state investment boards - is the founding insight for Mantle.
Public markets work because everything reconciles. CUSIP codes. DTCC clearing. Buyers and sellers matched every day. Bloomberg exists because that foundation does.
Private markets have subscription agreements tucked in a drawer and no identifier that follows a security issuance to LP portfolio.
Varma has seen this problem before. In the mid-90s, he was in Silicon Valley working on USB standardization - in the room for the literal plug fests where device manufacturers would show up, plug into a test console and earn the right to put a USB logo on their product. That’s how standards were built.
He thinks private markets needs the same thing.
And with a $30 trillion market and a 2025 executive order opening $12 trillion in retirement assets to alternatives, the window for building that foundation is now.
In this episode of the Modern Capital Podcast, Amar and Marc cover:
The Bloomberg-DTCC parallel: why public markets work and what private markets needs to build first
USB plug fests: what standards-building in Silicon Valley in the 90s teaches about private markets today
Why the cap table is the birth certificate and how connecting it to the LP portfolio changes everything
The August 2025 executive order on alternatives and why it accelerates the infrastructure problem before it solves it
What five exits actually teaches you about getting lucky
"Nobody gets tired when they're doing the thing. They get tired when they're not successful. That's the thing."
Varma has spent thirty years showing up before anyone else knew there was a problem.
This one is worth your time.
And if you’re interested in this topic, we’re hosting The 2026 Private Wealth Infrastructure Summit in New York on May 28, bringing together fund managers, platform builders and wealth leaders to define the infrastructure connecting private markets to a broader investor base.